Pistons embarrassed by Knicks as Detroit's free fall continues

The Detroit Pistons' embarrassing March meltdown continued Monday night at Madison Square Garden.

The Pistons - who are in the thick of a seven-team race for the Eastern Conference's final four playoff spots - were trounced (109-95) by a lowly New York Knicks squad that entered MSG having lost five straight, and eight of their last nine.

The breaking point came early in the second half, when the Knicks outscored the Pistons 15-0 over the opening 7:07 of the third quarter to stretch a five-point halftime lead to a 20-point advantage.

The disheartening result has become all too familiar for Stan Van Gundy's team. Since climbing back to .500 after a March 11 victory over New York, Detroit has lost seven of eight, culminating in a four-game losing streak. Even worse, those four straight losses have all come to losing teams, with the Pistons owning a minus-66 point-differential despite the Nets, Bulls, Magic, and Knicks boasting a combined record of 106-189.

Just over two weeks since that aforementioned March 11 victory - which saw the Pistons climb to seventh place - Detroit has slid to 10th, and it's closer to 11th-place Charlotte (0.5 games) than it is to eighth-place Miami (1.5 games).

Any momentum and goodwill the franchise engineered with their late-season push to the playoffs last year seems to have dissipated, as the cream-puff stretch of schedule that was supposed to propel another push this year may have buried them, instead.